14. And all general propositions that are known to be true concern abstract ideas.
In the former case, our
knowledge is the consequence of the existence of things, producing ideas in our minds by our senses: in the latter,
knowledge is the consequence of the ideas (be they what they will) that are in our minds, producing there general
certain propositions. Many of these are called aeternae veritates, and all of them indeed are so; not from being
written, all or any of them, in the minds of all men; or that they were any of them propositions in any one's mind,
till he, having got the abstract ideas, joined or separated them by affirmation or negation. But wheresoever we can
suppose such a creature as man is, endowed with such faculties, and thereby furnished with such ideas as we have,
we must conclude, he must needs, when he applies his thoughts to the consideration of his ideas, know the truth of
certain propositions that will arise from the agreement or disagreement which he will perceive in his own ideas.
Such propositions are therefore called eternal truths, not because they are eternal propositions actually formed,
and antecedent to the understanding that at any time makes them; nor because they are imprinted on the mind
from any patterns that are anywhere out of the mind, and existed before: but because, being once made about
abstract ideas, so as to be true, they will, whenever they can be supposed to be made again at any time, past or to
come, by a mind having those ideas, always actually be true. For names being supposed to stand perpetually for
the same ideas, and the same ideas having immutably the same habitudes one to another, propositions concerning
any abstract ideas that are once true must needs be eternal verities.